Noting that the UK expects the conditions of the crisis to worsen, Hague added that Britain has not yet decided if it will provide Syrian rebels with arms.

Hague called for a redoubling of international efforts to bring Syrian President Bashar Assad to the negotiating table with representatives of the opposition, AFP reported.

Hague's comments, made on the sidelines of a UN Security Council meeting in New York, come as hopes for the US-Russian agreed Geneva conference have dwindled in light of the significant territorial gains that Assad's troops have been making on the ground in Syria.

"What is being done now by the regime who have embarked on fresh military offensives since it was agreed that we would have a second Geneva conference is not helping to bring that about," Hague told an AFP reporter in New York.

"It places the opposition in a more difficult situation since to go to Geneva while such offensives are being conducted against them obviously is more difficult for them," he added.

"But we must not give up at all on trying to bring such a conference together. There has to be a political solution," AFP reported Hague as saying.